January 2011
16 posts
Gokarna
On our first day on Om Beach in Gokarna I felt like I’d landed on the Lost island. It was blissfully peaceful and unspoilt; whilst there were groups of westerners in bikinis, there were also several Indian families plunging into the sea fully-clad in their saris.
So-called because it is shaped like the Hindu “Om” sign, Om Beach is essentially two beaches that join in the middle....
My first experience of the Indian railway!
From Monday 18th December all DiA volunteers had taken two weeks off to meet up in Gokarna, Karnataka and then Palolem in Goa for a Christmas and New Year holiday.
Florence’s mum had been here for ten days and they were both in Mamallapuram so I took the bus from Pondicherry to Chennai to meet them. It turned out to be more complicated than a) I’d expected and b) it needed to be;...
A friend for 3 days...
Another presence at the Farm was Devi, a french girl who was only 17 but acted my age and was really easy to get along with. She was only visiting Volontariat for a week after having worked elsewhere and I was only there 3 days with her, but it really brightened up those days and made me feel a lot less lonely, like I had a friend to share my experiences with.
She told me about the NGO just...
Touttipakkam ("The Farm")
The day after i went to Sourya Home, I finally went to visit Touttipakkam, otherwise known as “the Farm”. I went with the kindergarten and their teacher, Tamilshelvi, but it turned out there were some other new volunteers (mainly middle-aged French women who were friends with Madame de Blic) and a few new social workers also going.
Touttipakkam is miles away and when we arrived at its...
Sourya Home
On Tuesday 14th December, I finally got the opportunity to visit Sourya Home, an interesting project of Volontariat.
As well as being a creche for children from the local area - like at Shakti Vihar where I work - it is primarily a shelter for “street boys” - homeless boys who may have been abandoned by their families, or whose families cannot look after them. Kumaren, a social worker...
December 2010
4 posts
Madame's return
After I was ill, there were about four days when there was no creche, kindergarten or evening class at work because of the cyclone on the sea causing endless monsoon rain on the land.
When I returned to work proper, I knew it would be pretty different because Madame de Blic, who has spent so long in France, was back. Before even seeing her, I was accosted in the dining room at lunch by a French...
Slum of ambivalence
Rob, Florence’s fellow volunteer at Sharana, is now back from a month travelling around India and enjoyed talking to us about it. It reinforced what is being hit home to me every day: the sheer vastness of India. He was away for four weeks and still didn’t really see that much - and what he did see seemed pretty rushed. His favourite place was Varanasi, where he went first; he then...
...Yet more things wrong with me!
I have had a persistently itchy scalp for a few weeks now, and I thought last week that I may as well bite the bullet and buy some nit shampoo and a comb - the only way to see if I have caught headlice. I found reasonably priced shampoo very easily in a local supermarket, downstairs, and was told to go upstairs to find a comb.
I ended up explaning in slow English with my Indian accent that I...
Change of routine
Being able to spend more time in the Shakti Vihar creche at Volontariat has been a joy.
My first full morning there was on Tuesday 23rd November. After all the usual washing, dressing and feeding, I stayed where the older children (around 3 years, I learned) are based. Jodi was leading the activities. She is a big woman with a bad foot, upon which she has to walk sideways, but she has a lovely...
November 2010
16 posts
Putting my foot down!
The next week at work was pretty hectic, my main objective being to ask Mr Sendhil if I could change routine. I found him and asked on Monday, telling him about Manoher and Gopalan, students who never come. I said that I really enjoy helping out in the creche and would like to do more of this as opposed to just sitting in a classroom, waiting for people to show up. He said he’d speak to them...
Water shortage and Children's Day
When we got back from the Nilgiris, we found our kitchen table wet and dirty from stuff blown through the window - open for the renovation going on and wooden scaffolding that someone thrust through the window - indicating that some kind of violent storm had taken place; Vetri, a social worker at Sharana, told Florence that there was a cyclone in Pondicherry the day before we got back, and three...
